Everything about United Nations Emergency Force totally explained
The first
United Nations Emergency Force (
UNEF) was established by
United Nations General Assembly to secure an end to the 1956
Suez Crisis with resolution 1001 (ES-I) on
November 7,
1956, and in large measure as a result of efforts by
UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and a proposal from
Canadian minister of external affairs
Lester Pearson. The first UN military force of its kind, its mission was to:
» ... enter Egyptian territory with the consent of the Egyptian Government, in order to help maintain quiet during and after the withdrawal of non-Egyptian forces and to secure compliance with the other terms established in the resolution ... to cover an area extending roughly from the Suez Canal to the Armistice Demarcation Lines established in the Armistice Agreement between Egypt and Israel.
Since the operative UN resolutions were not passed under
Chapter VII of the
United Nations Charter, the deployment of a military force had to be approved by Egypt. After multilateral negotiations with Egypt ten countries offered to contribute to the force:
Brazil,
Canada,
Colombia,
Denmark,
Finland,
India,
Indonesia,
Norway,
Sweden, and
Yugoslavia. Support was also provided by
United States,
Italy, and
Switzerland. The first forces arrived in Cairo on
November 15, and UNEF was at its full force of 6,000 by February 1957. The force was fully deployed in designated areas around the canal, in the
Sinai and
Gaza when
Israel withdrew its last forces from
Rafah on
March 8,
1957. The UN secretary general sought to station UNEF forces on the Israeli side of the 1949 armistice lines, but this was rejected by Israel.
The mission was directed to accomplish its mission in four phases:
- In November and December 1956, the force facilitated the orderly transition in the Suez Canal area when British and French forces left.
- From December 1956 to March 1957, the force facilitated the separation of Israeli and Egyptian forces and the Israeli evacuation from all areas captured during the war, except Gaza and Sharm-el-Sheik.
- In March 1957, the force facilitated the departure of Israeli forces from Gaza and Sharm-el-Sheik.
- Deployment along the borders for purposes of observation. This phase ended in May of 1967.
Due to financial constraints and changing needs, the force shrank through the years to 3,378 by the time its mission ended in May 1967.
On
May 16,
1967, the Egyptian government ordered all United Nations forces out of Sinai effective immediately. Then Secretary-General
U Thant tried to redeploy UNEF to areas within the Israeli side of the 1949 armistice lines to maintain buffer, but this was rejected by Israel. In a decision that proved to be controversial, Thant acted to effect the Egyptian order without consulting either the
Security Council or the General Assembly. Most of the forces were evacuated by the end of May, but 15 UNEF forces were caught in combat operations and killed in the
Six Day War. The last United Nations soldier left the region on
June 17.
Further Information
Get more info on 'United Nations Emergency Force'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://united_nations_emergency_force.totallyexplained.com">United Nations Emergency Force Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
